What does “The Year of Making Love” teach us about relationships?

Will brought a rose. Kay looked suitably impressed. “Do I fancy him?” she asked the camera. “Maybe. I don’t know his personality yet, so that’s a big thing. I’m looking forward to finding out what he’s like.” Will was a little more forthright in his assessment. “I wouldn’t say I fancied her yet,” he told the camera with what a tabloid reporter might describe as a ‘cheeky smile’. “One thing that’s clouding my judgement at the moment is that I’ve seen another girl sitting quite close to our table that I do find attractive and is probably more my normal type...” Then I watched Rogan and Natalie go on a first date before “sharing a bed” (demure choice of words the voiceover lady’s, not mine). Next morning, Natalie divulged no information; Rogan smiled demurely at the camera. And then Andy went with Kirsty to Amsterdam, his plan being to “ask her out when we get there.” Months – or twenty-something minutes later – Newquay sunset in the background, Andy leaned in and told Kirsty: “I’m in love with you. You’re absolutely an amazing girl.” They kissed in the surf and the programme-makers played a gentle neo-folk song over the moment.

I have been watching The Year of Making Love on BBC Three for the last few weeks, and I am exhausted. It’s basically a social experiment, something they’ve called “Britain’s biggest blind date”, in which three experts have used “scientifically robust” compatibility tests to match up hundreds of couples. Their cameras will follow the pairings for a year, to see if scientific matchmaking can yield love. “Millions of people are single because they’re hooked on this crazy idea that there’s just one perfect person out there,” says Thomas the profiler. “The reality is that we have several potential good matches.”Over the course of the six episodes, we see just a few of these unions (if not the ‘science’ that matched them in the first place) and not all of them are good.

The overwhelming take-home from watching other people actively seeking and then pursuing love is “gosh, that looks like a lot of work”. There was snogging, there were awkward chats, a lot of booze. And there were a whole series of baffling (to my clearly under-achieving eyes) dates set up: one woman set up her date at the gym, where the fledgling couple took a lesson in Muy Thai boxing. One told her date to prepare material for a short set at an open mic comedy night. Another couple went sky-diving. I sat watching at home, wrapped in a blanket, agog. Whatever happened to a nice cup of tea and a sit down? Never have I been more bewildered by the mating habits of Britain’s young. Is this what it takes to find love nowadays? Well, buy me a cat and a lifetime prescription for animal allergy tablets, because spinsterhood looms large and I never saw a stereotype I couldn’t smash. The question is: will no one think of the lazy-in-love?

It’s a question I have been asking more and more recently, for whatever reason. There’s been a glut of long form essays on relationships: deep ruminations on whether love is supposed to fade, or if we are killing romance, or if dating is not a recipe for love but the fleeting joy of “hook-up culture” (these articles always have something made up and buzzy in them). Did our parents and grandparents worry like this? Is love really this complex? Comedian and actor Aziz Ansari gave an insightful interview to the AV Club last week, in which he talks about modern love in relation to modern manners and technology and laments the tyranny of choice. One bit stood out for me:

I read this one guy’s texts where he texted a girl once and then texted again an hour later, after she didn’t respond. There were audible gasps in the audience when I read that.

Communication was a big thing in The Year of Making Love . There were men who said they would call and never did. Women who sent text messages that went unanswered. One memorable standing up; her to camera at the last minute: “I don’t think I can put myself through it.” Him to camera, outside the restaurant: “I’m not hurt, [I’m] pissed.”Many iterations of the sentiment behind the statement: “I don’t know if he/she is really into me”. People who promised themselves (again, on camera) they weren’t going to do something and then doing exactly that. So many feelings! All on display for our viewing pleasure. It was excruciating to watch: have you ever really watched two people kiss? What a ridiculous idea it is. It’s the most awkward thing in the entire world, and never more so than when practiced by young, sometimes lightly intoxicated people who barely know one another. Falling in love is hard – who knew?

By the end of episode one, Natalie had “shared a bed” with Rogan again, and hadn’t heard back. “That gives me all the answers I need, really,” she told the camera. Between a shaky breath and blinking back tears, she added: “For the sake of my sanity, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to continue being involved in this.” Meanwhile Will and Kay, the first couple to be matched on the day, were also the first couple to drop out (the tyranny of choice strikes again – I had been right to judge him harshly!). Beyond all the flirting, and the bravado, and the snappy dialogue, when things fell apart, they all looked so young. They all looked so broken. And so I remembered the untouchable Annie Hall: relationships are “totally irrational and crazy and absurd. But uh, I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.”

Leader: The unresolved Eurozone crisis

The eurozone crisis was never resolved. It was merely conveniently forgotten. The vote for Brexit, the terrible war in Syria and Donald Trump’s election as US president all distracted from the single currency’s woes. Yet its contradictions endure, a permanent threat to continental European stability and the future cohesion of the European Union.

The resignation of the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, following defeat in a constitutional referendum on 4 December, was the moment at which some believed that Europe would be overwhelmed. Among the champions of the No campaign were the anti-euro Five Star Movement (which has led in some recent opinion polls) and the separatist Lega Nord. Opponents of the EU, such as Nigel Farage, hailed the result as a rejection of the single currency.

An Italian exit, if not unthinkable, is far from inevitable, however. The No campaign comprised not only Eurosceptics but pro-Europeans such as the former prime minister Mario Monti and members of Mr Renzi’s liberal-centrist Democratic Party. Few voters treated the referendum as a judgement on the monetary union.

To achieve withdrawal from the euro, the populist Five Star Movement would need first to form a government (no easy task under Italy’s complex multiparty system), then amend the constitution to allow a public vote on Italy’s membership of the currency. Opinion polls continue to show a majority opposed to the return of the lira.

But Europe faces far more immediate dangers. Italy’s fragile banking system has been imperilled by the referendum result and the accompanying fall in investor confidence. In the absence of state aid, the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, could soon face ruin. Italy’s national debt stands at 132 per cent of GDP, severely limiting its firepower, and its financial sector has amassed $360bn of bad loans. The risk is of a new financial crisis that spreads across the eurozone.

EU leaders’ record to date does not encourage optimism. Seven years after the Greek crisis began, the German government is continuing to advocate the failed path of austerity. On 4 December, Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, declared that Greece must choose between unpopular “structural reforms” (a euphemism for austerity) or withdrawal from the euro. He insisted that debt relief “would not help” the immiserated country.

Yet the argument that austerity is unsustainable is now heard far beyond the Syriza government. The International Monetary Fund is among those that have demanded “unconditional” debt relief. Under the current bailout terms, Greece’s interest payments on its debt (roughly €330bn) will continually rise, consuming 60 per cent of its budget by 2060. The IMF has rightly proposed an extended repayment period and a fixed interest rate of 1.5 per cent. Faced with German intransigence, it is refusing to provide further funding.

Ever since the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, declared in 2012 that he was prepared to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the single currency, EU member states have relied on monetary policy to contain the crisis. This complacent approach could unravel. From the euro’s inception, economists have warned of the dangers of a monetary union that is unmatched by fiscal and political union. The UK, partly for these reasons, wisely rejected membership, but other states have been condemned to stagnation. As Felix Martin writes on page 15, “Italy today is worse off than it was not just in 2007, but in 1997. National output per head has stagnated for 20 years – an astonishing . . . statistic.”

Germany’s refusal to support demand (having benefited from a fixed exchange rate) undermined the principles of European solidarity and shared prosperity. German unemployment has fallen to 4.1 per cent, the lowest level since 1981, but joblessness is at 23.4 per cent in Greece, 19 per cent in Spain and 11.6 per cent in Italy. The youngest have suffered most. Youth unemployment is 46.5 per cent in Greece, 42.6 per cent in Spain and 36.4 per cent in Italy. No social model should tolerate such waste.

“If the euro fails, then Europe fails,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has often asserted. Yet it does not follow that Europe will succeed if the euro survives. The continent that once aspired to be a rival superpower to the US is now a byword for decline, and ethnic nationalism and right-wing populism are thriving. In these circumstances, the surprise has been not voters’ intemperance, but their patience.